Chapters (124)
- Cover
- About the Author
- Acclaim for Frank Gardner’s Luke Carlton thrillers
- Also by Frank Gardner
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- 109
- 110
- 111
- 112
- 113
- 114
- 115
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
Listening to the Russian, unable to understand a single word, Luke wondered why on earth the Service couldn’t have sent a Russian speaker for this mission. Once more his conscience was stirring. He had been a teenager when Al-Qaida flew those planes into the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001. But he knew that in the panicked aftermath Washington was so convinced another catastrophic attack was coming they went to extreme lengths to uncover any plot, real or imagined. It was a morally dark period of illegal snatching of suspects, who were then transported, cuffed and blindfolded, across the world to secret CIA ‘black sites’, where they were subjected to what was euphemistically called ‘enhanced interrogation’. One man, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was subjected to waterboarding – simulated drowning – at a black site in Poland 183 times. Again, Luke felt a strong urge to get up and leave, and again he stayed. The prisoner in the chair was shaking his head and repeating ‘Pozhaluysta’ over and over again. This, at least Luke knew, meant ‘please’.
‘This man,’ explained Petrov, ‘would like very much to help you.’ Luke gazed at the sorry figure slumped in front of the laptop. He didn’t look like he wanted to do anything of the kind. No, Luke thought, enough of this. He should extricate himself from this whole situation now and bug out back to London without delay. He started to say something, but the colonel cut him off.
‘He has access to the encrypted forum for the people who run WaffenKrieg90. I think you know of this group. As a gesture of brotherly cooperation, we will let you use his identity to contact them. But we expect you to share everything you find with us.’
Colonel Petrov took a pace backwards and for the second time his face showed a trace of a smile. ‘Unless, of course, you disapprove of our methods.’ He shrugged, pulled out a cigarette, lit it and turned his back on Luke. ‘The choice is yours, Luke Carlton,’ he said, facing the bare walls of the lockup. ‘But I can tell you this, you don’t have much time.’